


When You Kill The Lights and Kiss My Eyes

by NMC



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Don't Worry It's Not Rey or Kylo, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Snowed In, Tumblr: reylofanfictionanthology, Valentine's Day Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-18 15:42:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13684704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NMC/pseuds/NMC
Summary: "It has been three months of silence between them. Though neither she nor he seems able to keep the bond closed for long, they don’t talk when it opens. Instead, they just wait in pained silence until with a tremor that feels like disappointment, like grief, the connection sighs closed once more.It doesn’t stop the dreams though...."In the months after 'The Last Jedi' Rey and Kylo Ren both struggle with their ongoing connection. But the Force cannot be denied. Through hurt and grief and danger they find their way to each other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dietplainlite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dietplainlite/gifts).



> Dear dietplainlite, 
> 
> I hope you like your gift. I had a lot of fun writing it. Your prompts and the exchange really inspired me, this is by far the longest thing I've ever written. 
> 
> Happy Reylo Valentine's!

Honey, when you kill the lights, and kiss my eyes  
I feel like a person for a moment of my life

But you don't know what hell you put me through  
To have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you  
To feel your weight in arms I'd never use  
It's the god that heroin prays to

It feels good, girl, it feels good  
It feels good, girl, it feels good  
It feels good, girl, it feels good  
To be alone with you”

\- Hozier “To Be Alone”.

It has been three months of silence between them. Though neither she nor he seems able to keep the bond closed for long, they don’t talk when it opens. Instead, they just wait in pained silence until with a tremor that feels like disappointment, like grief, the connection sighs closed once more.

It doesn’t stop the dreams though. Rey knows now who the strange voice, that had for so many years lingered in the back of her dreams, belongs to. Who the immaterial figure that would ghost by is. It was always Ben. He was what she found on Ach-To, he was why she had so long dreamed of the island. 

But it is different now. Different ever since that first touch of skin on skin, fingertips meeting over the fire. He is no longer hazy and unknown but solid and clear.

At night Rey finds herself in his memories.

The first time she opens her eye’s into his past she is kneeling beside a small, black-haired boy as he peaks around the corner into a gleaming white room.

Shouting fills the air; a man and women are visible around the corner, screaming themselves absolutely hoarse. With a start, Rey recognises a younger Han and Leia.

If Rey hadn’t known better, hadn’t seen that their love still ran deep so many years later, she would have thought they absolutely hated one another, the way they are screaming. 

She turns sweeping through the dream world to look at the young boy. Ben Solo is trembling, tears in his eyes as he watches his parents. 

The second time, Rey watches Ben stare after the _Millennium Falcon_ as his parents leave him behind to become a Jedi. There are no tears now, though he can’t be much older, but his expression is one of pure grief. 

He looks like how I felt being left behind on Jakku, she thinks.

Another night, she dreams she is in front of a grand old temple. A group of teenagers lounge in the sun, relaxed and happy, joking around. 

“He’s nothing like his father or his mother from what I hear,” a handsome blonde boy says conspiratorially. 

“I mean none of the stories mention Han Solo being a grouchy weirdo do they?” The others chuckle in agreement.

“… and he’s certainly no beauty like his mother, I mean if he flapped those ears he could probably fly away, if it wasn’t for his nose weighing him down.” 

The group's words, and the raucous laughter that follows, carry to a lanky figure hunched behind a tree trying to read.

Rey watches Ben squeezing his eyes shut, clenching his jaw as his lip trembles, trying so hard to pretend he can’t hear.

Just last night she had closed her eyes and found herself once again in front of the hulking temple, though it is overcast this time. Two younglings are practising, their yellow lightsabers flashing in the grey light. 

Rey recognises Luke, though he too is younger than she has ever seen him in person. His eyes are aglow with pride as one girl disarms the other. 

Ben is well taller than Rey now. His face, though still youthful, is much closer to the one Kylo Ren first revealed to her from under his mask on Starkiller Base.

He steps forward to spar against the blond boy who had joked so cruelly that sunlit day. They slide and twist, lightsabers sizzling, for a few minutes. 

Rey notes that Ben is clearly the better fighter, his power seeming to ripple around him. Soon the blonde is flipped off his feet, and a yellow beam is spitting inches from his face.

Ben steps back and turns to his Uncle, but there is no pride in his face this time. Instead, Luke looks wary, looks fearful at his nephew’s show of skill.

Ben seems to deflate, so tall and yet suddenly small. 

And in the background of every memory a slick dark voice whispers. Through all the years it is there, a shadow always just behind Ben’s shoulder. 

This is a voice Rey recognises too and it chills her to the bone, even though she knows he can not harm her from the past.

She is sickened by how he had hissed in Ben’s ear for so long…

“You disappoint them,” Rey hears Snoke whisper as Ben’s memory replays Han sighing…

“Upset them,” Leia’s face, tearstained, flashes past…

“Disgust them,” Luke’s other trainees turn away…. 

“They do not trust you,” Luke’s guarded eyes, just waiting… 

“They do not love you, or understand… They do not want you… They fear you…” A green lightsaber poised in the night to strike…

”But I am here for you,” croons Snoke, echoing through the years, “now and always”.

“Come to me and I will show you all you can be…. You are better than them… They are too small to see… Come and see how proud you can make your Grandfather under my training… They lied to you… I can give you the world… I will give you everything you seek…”

Snoke is like a black fog swirling around Ben that no one else can see and yet Rey feels in every dream how hard he fights it. How long he tries to block out the voice. Turning always back to the light. Reaching out for family, for friends, for love. No one reaches back and alone Ben drowns in the darkness. 

Snoke lays bare all his worst memories, his loneliest moments. When it is not his mind being torn apart, it is his body. Ben Solo screams in the cold until there is nothing left and Kylo Ren is born.

Rey wakes gasping and sweating from the ones that end like that. 

With each of these mournful nighttime trips down memory lane, Rey can feel, as though it was her own pain, the ache that has long since settled itself in Ben’s chest. She recognises the feeling all too well… the weight of terrible loneliness. 

Not all her dreams are of the past though. Sometimes Rey dreams of them together, free and at peace, as they have never yet been. 

She can’t decide if this is the future. She had seen them united when they had touched hands and look what had happened, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren now rules. 

Rey is sure what she sees on her nighttime trips into his past are true (if only because she doesn’t feel she has the imagination to conjure up all the little details of young Ben’s life, and certainly not the vividness of Snoke’s cruelty and manipulation) and these maybe-future dreams feel just as real…

And yet she can’t help but wonder if they aren’t just normal dreams. Maybe they are merely wish fulfilment because she so wants an ally who truly understands her, a balm to her loneliness, a victory to ease her anger at herself for being naive enough to think she could just show up and turn him back to the light.

She is tempted to ask him each time their bond opens if he has such dreams too. “Do you see my past?” she wants to ask. “Could I really be seeing the future? Is my future and your future, really our future?” 

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t know where to start really. Doesn’t know what to say or where to go from here. 

It’s clear Ben has not forgiven her for trying to take the lightsaber, trying to hurt him in a moment of such vulnerability. 

And honestly, she thinks part of her hasn’t forgiven herself either. Part of her is deeply sad that she couldn’t just take his hand and cure both their loneliness. Another is guilty she hadn’t tried harder to reach out to him and bring him around to her way of thinking. Then, there is the rebel in her that wonders if the right thing to do for the galaxy wouldn’t have been to finish him as he lay unconscious, instead of sweeping his hair from his face and then fleeing with tears in her eyes. 

It’s all a mess between them and yet the connection persists. 

Luke may not have been much of a master to her but she still mourns this absence. There is so much she still needs to know. " _You need a teacher, I could show you the ways of the Force,_ ” echoes in the back of her mind. 

She has found only the briefest of mentions of a Force bond in the Jedi texts that she had taken from Ach-To and it doesn’t tell her nearly enough. Will it fade? Or are they doomed to continue to connect and ignore each other for the rest of their lives? 

What if one of them died? Something seems to shrivel up in Rey’s chest just at the idea of Ben’s death but it is a genuine possibility. They are at war, one side will win eventually and either herself or Ben could easily be lost to the other. 

Pondering the nature of the Force bond and the potential for Ben’s death always brings her back another dilemma. How is she supposed to fight his First Order, fight him, if she doesn’t actually want to see him dead? 

How is she supposed to see him as the villain she would need to to do that when she spends half her nights wrapped up in his memories? When she has come to know so much of him…

Rey spends her nights in dreams that are not her’s, or at least not her’s alone, and her days going in circles about whether she should be fighting Ben (but how can I?) or trying once more to save him (but hasn’t he had multiple chances to come back to the light and refused them?), punctuated by silent, painful encounters every time the the bond opens, which only leave her more conflicted.


	2. Chapter 2

It is Rey who brings him the news. 

It has been three months of silence between them. He can’t allow himself to even look at her when the bond opens, much less speak (though he has to grind his teeth against everything he wants to say). 

She is proof of everything Snoke had told him for so many years. How despised he will always be. How worthless he is to everyone. He had the family and the history and the name, none of which mattered. Rey had made it clear he was nothing to her.

Even though Rey had rejected him, would probably have finished what his Uncle’s started and struck him down if she had been able to get the lightsaber from him, Kylo can’t bring himself to regret killing Snoke. 

It is like he can breathe freely for the first time in memory, Snoke’s presence no longer choking him every moment. 

More than that though, he can’t regret saving Rey, despite her betrayal. The thought of running her through, as he had his Father, makes him ill. He is glad not to have her on his conscience too. 

The boiling rage that had gripped him after he first awoke in the throne room and had to face her rejection has turned cold. Kylo can see he was being foolish to think he would ever have the will to destroy her. But he is also determined not to give her power over him again. He had opened himself up to her in a way he hadn’t in so many years, in his whole life really. He is resolute that he will not make that mistake again. 

The dreams make it hard though. He has spent so many nights these last few months in her memories, getting to know her better than he ever has anybody. 

In his dreams, he sees the full harshness of her life. 

The first time, Rey is young and tiny. Her arm is being crushed in the huge, sweaty hand of a lumbering Crolute, as she cries out to a ship shooting into the distance. The sun beats down, across the dunes Kylo sees the wreck of a huge star destroyer. 

When he awakes he recognises that he was on Jakku, though it takes him a few more nights to understand the dreams are memories. Are _her…_

In his second dream, Rey is a little older and more recognisable. She is sitting on the sand, lip bleeding, staring after two older girls who had kicked her to the ground and taken the first sellable piece of scrap she’d found in four days. 

Somehow Kylo knows, without being told, that though her stomach is cramping with hunger, it’s the fact she falsely thought she’d made some friends that aches the most. 

Another night, Kylo sees Rey in her mid-teens. She has a staff slung over her back. Still a slip of a thing though. It is just going evening as three men corner her in the bowels of some hulking, crashed starship.

They leer at her, making seedy remarks that make Kylo’s skin crawl. He can feel how her blood had run cold as though it were in his own veins. 

As she backs away they lunge as a coordinated group. Their hands are everywhere. Rey swings her staff with everything she has, slowly they fall back enough for her to dash away. 

She sprints all the way to her ATAT, Kylo pulled behind her on the winds of memory. Only once she is sealed inside does her let herself go to her knees, taking heaving breaths of the cold night air as she sobs. Her shirt is torn open and he can see bruises are forming on her arms and neck. He knows more are likely hidden by her clothes. 

He wakes and goes to wash his face after that one, but he can’t shake is absolute rage and disgust. He pulls his lightsaber to him and reaps his revenge against his bathroom walls. 

In his dreams, Kylo even sees flashes of her dreams. He sees the months of sickening nightmares that follow the attack. He feels her resolve to never goes back to the _Ravager_ , even though its size makes it a good picking ground and to never stay out past afternoon. Kylo recognises how much harder that must have made it to find enough scrap to feed herself. 

Thousands of days and nights blur together as he relives Rey’s life, watching her grow up. Ceaselessly hungry, curling in a ball against the dark, cold desert nights. She is always all alone, her heart bleeding as she tries to hang on to the belief that someone is coming back.

He awakes hearing the echo of her heartsick call; “Is there anyone out there that cares if I live or die?”

It makes the loneliness worse, to know Rey like this. To more and more respect her courage, admire her ingenuity, be awed by her heart. To always be being drawn more into her and yet know she has seen him in return and doesn’t feel the same. 

He know’s enough about Force Bonds to be sure that she must be dreaming his life too. There are so many things he wants to say but he can’t let her in again. Kylo does wonder though why she does not try to say something to him. Her disgust must be overwhelming any curiosity. Still a monster to her after all. 

So it shocks him when after three months of radio silence she speaks. A soft “Ben” coming from behind him. He turns in surprise and finds her eyes red-rimmed, arms around herself in a lonely imitation of a hug. 

“Ben, there is something you need to know… I didn’t want you to hear or sense some other way… I…” 

Rey trails off looking stricken and Kylo knows instantly.

What else would make her look like this? Would make her break their silence like this?

Before he has given himself permission to ask, the question slips past his lips… “My mother?”

Rey nods sadly. “She had a stroke in her sleep last night, she is on life support but they don’t expect…” Her sentence trails into nothing once more. 

“I didn’t want you to just sense it or worse hear it on the Holonet or something… Ben, I’m so sorry”.

And she looks it, so sorry for him. Kylo realises belatedly his face must be giving him away (like it always does, he thinks angrily). He bits down on his lip as his jaw starts to tremble and turns his back on her.

He will not give her this. He will not show her this weakness and hand her another tool with which to get under his skin. He’d killed his master for her. Had been willing to share everything with her. And she’d turned her back on him just like all the rest. 

Kylo takes hissing, shuddering breathes through his teeth trying to keep his frame from shaking and revealing how much her news is unravelling him. 

He wants to tell Rey to get out, to go away, but can’t trust his voice.

And then it happens. He feels across the galaxy his mother take her last breathe and the life slip away from her, a leaf gently carried off by the breeze. 

It hits him like a storm though. His stumbles forward and has to brace himself against the wall to stop his knees giving out. Distantly he hears Rey gasp behind him and wonders if she feels the emptiness Leia Organa has left in the universe, the darkness of such a bright star being snuffed out, or if she can just tell from his display. 

They are all gone, he thinks. I’m alone. 

As soon as he has thought it he is reprimanding himself. Don’t be stupid, you were alone well before this, Kylo reminds himself. Family was lost to you a long time ago.

“Why am I doing this?” he asks out loud, “I doubt she would grieve for me if the situation was reversed”.

“That’s not true!” Rey gasps, “I know she loved you. Both your parents did”.

“She knew I was on Starkiller and yet the Resistance came to destroy it on her orders. She would have killed me for her cause,” Kylo reminds himself as much as Rey, fighting to press his feelings back down as he has always done to survive. 

“No Ben,” Rey tries desperately, moving forward and grabbing his arm. “She sent Han specifically to try and bring you home before the base blew, Chewy told me”.

“My mother was a master politician before she was a general,” Kylo spits. “She knew what it took to win people to her side. She would have known my father coming then was too little, too late. It was at best a token gesture so she could keep telling herself that they’re the heroes and I’m the monster. My mother cast me aside long ago. She made her choice. The child she cared about was always and only the Republic.”

And yet he can’t keep the tears from falling and his chest aches with the absence of his father and his uncle and now his mother. And he hates himself for it, for this pathetic attachment to those who all cut him adrift.

“She loved you,” Rey repeats, though softer this time, “and I can tell you loved her too”.

“Ahh,” Kylo growls, fisting his hands in his hair as he pulls away. He doesn’t want to hear this. Can’t hear this. Doesn’t want to open those doors inside himself again, not even a crack or the light will leech back in.

His lightsaber is in his hand in a flash and he hears Rey take a few sudden steps away from his back as he ignites it. It cuts through the wall of his ship with ease, burning and tearing and he finds himself screaming along with the recoiling metal. He slashes and slashes. Anything to release this feeling. Anything to ignore the tears on his cheeks. 

Kylo tears his bedroom, his usual sanctuary, apart, but it is not enough. Gasping a final cry through his tears he falls to his knees and lets his blade go out and roll away from him. 

He kneels, head hanging, so defeated in his grief and isolation that he doesn’t hear or sense Rey’s approach until she is kneeling in front of him, her hands rising to his shoulders and then pulling him forward against her.

He tries to push her away at first, but strong and stubborn as ever she clings on and draws him in.

You shouldn’t want this. Don’t give her this ammunition, he tries to tell himself, even as he is leaning into her anyway. 

Still drawn to her like gravity. “You’re so weak,” he can practically hear Snoke hiss at him. But he can’t resist and arcs forward to press his tearstained face into her neck, a sob of grief and of relief escaping him as Rey’s arms close tight around him. 

She leans in to rest her face against his temple and strokes his hair with one hand. 

He dwarfs her and yet somehow she is the one wrapped protectively around him. He fists his hands in the back of her shirt aching with how right this feels. With how he needs this.

How long has it been since someone hugged him? Kylo wonders mournfully. His mother was the last he is sure of that. 

His father had lost the ability to show his son affection by the time he was being shipped off to Luke at 14. And his Uncle had always tried not to show any preferential treatment, he was just another student with a calm, wise and restrained master.

It must have been the last time Leia had visited him at the academy, nearly two years before he had awoken to his uncle poised to strike him. 

Eight years then. Eight years since he has been this close to anyone. Kylo sinks against Rey a little more. 

She smells nice, and it reminds him that he still remembers, in a locked away corner of his mind, how his mother’s hair smelt. How her voice sounded and the colour of her eyes.

Kylo shudders as a fresh wave of grief washes over him. Rey just makes soft noises of comfort into his hair and holds on tight.

They stay like that for a long time, not talking just holding and breathing each other in.


	3. Chapter 3

A week has passed since the loss of General Leia. Rey had attended the funeral two days ago, a massive outpouring of mourning for an incredible woman. 

She wishes Ben could have been there. Could have had some chance to say goodbye since reconciliation is now lost to him. 

Sometimes Rey can feel him so clearly through their connection that it is like he is standing just out of her peripheral vision. Other times, his feelings wash over her, and she can’t help but wonder what is making him sad or angry or frustrated. 

Rey feels him during the service and wonders what emotions of hers are bleeding across to him. She know’s he cannot see any of her surroundings even when the bond is fully opened but she thinks he can probably tell where she is in that moment anyway. 

His grief has been palpable to her for the entire week. Rey wants to offer comfort but every time the bond opens fully and allows them to see each other he forces it closed again. She knows this takes a huge effort, from the time she had closed it before leaving Crete, so within a few days she gets the message and stops trying to engage with him. 

She can tell why. He cannot block her well enough to hide how ashamed he at having broken down in front of her. How defensive he is, sure she is about to use it to manipulate him. How angry he is with himself for liking it so much.

Ben’s conflict is something she can relate too. It had been difficult enough to balance her connection to, and sympathy for him, and her duty to the Rebels before they had spent hours embracing. 

Now Rey has no idea how to go back to ignoring each other. Has no idea how to let go when what she really wants is to pull closer. Has absolutely no clue where they are supposed to go from here.

The trip to Ilum is a long shot but Rey desperately wants the distraction. Anything to have a diversion from grief and longing and confusion.

On Jakku she rose with the dawn and worked all day. She was always able to distract herself by exhausting herself and she wants that escape again now. 

Leia had told her it is well documented that The Empire had devastated Ilum by over mining the kyber crystals to power the Death Star, but she has to try.

The blue crystal is cracked, and even though she knows it is possible to use a cracked crystal because Ben does, Rey doesn’t think it would suit her. 

She knows why it works for him, a broken crystal for a broken man. “ _Killing Han Solo split your soul to the bone_ ”. 

It’s not even just that the crystal is broken that makes Rey want to seek a new one. It is too connected to him. She can’t hold the little blue gem without thinking of him. It didn’t call to her because she was destined to train with Luke. It showed her Ben. It called to her because of their connection. “ _Don’t be afraid, I feel it too_ ”.

She had claimed it by overpowering him in the snow. It is the blade he had used to kill Snoke to save her. She had shared it with him to save his life in turn. And she had broken it as she broke his trust. “ _Please_ ”.

How could she ever fight him again using the blue crystal? How could she ever move on if Ben was at the heart of her blade?

And what if they did have a future? How could she keep the crystal that she’d used to slice his face open? 

Ilum is a long shot, but Rey needs a lightsaber, and a lightsaber needs a crystal and right now she can’t stand for it to be this one. 

Poe and Finn both think someone should go with her but Rey knows the rebellion is far too undermanned to send multiple people on what could very well be a wild goose chase. Someone else probably couldn’t help anyhow, the old texts she _borrowed_ from Luke seem to suggest that only a force sensitive would be able to distinguish a kyber crystal from ice. Poe does insist BB-8 keep her company though.

Chewy also digs out some musty snow gear still stashed in a little-used compartment in the bowls of the Falcon. White pants and jacket with a cream vest. Rebel vintage apparently, once belonging to Leia.

Rey doesn’t take the Falcon itself though. It is too recognisable and too trackable, and beside it is one of the larger ships the Rebels have now (which isn’t saying much) so she can’t just disappear with it for her own purposes. 

The deaths of Luke and Leia, though blows to the cause in their own right, have inspired more help to come out of the woodwork. The Rebels now have a few dozen small fighter jets and the Commanders grant her leave to take one. 

She knows they are hoping she’ll become Luke Skywalker II and be the one to defeat Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. Rey herself is not so sure she’ll live up to this but she’s not about to say no to the loan of a ship. 

She is using the part of Luke’s map that BB-8 had carried to navigate. Ilum is in the Unknown Regions but is marked on Luke’s map, perhaps for its past significance to the Jedi order as such a kyber crystal-rich planet. 

Rey is using a Hyperspace docking ring so the trip is fairly short and thankfully uneventful. 

As she comes out of hyperspace above the planet Rey is struck by its strange appearance. She has never seen a snow planet from space before (having been uncurious upon her arrival at Starkiller and too distracted trying to help Finn for a glance back before its destruction). 

From orbit, Ilum is covered in swirls of whites and greys. But that is not what gives it its striking appearance. The planet is marred by great red gashes, where the Empire had torn up the earth and mined for crystals all the way to the world’s core. Great molten trenches now scar the planet's face. 

Rey sighs. She had known finding a crystal here was a long shot but now faced with the full extent of the Empire’s desecration she wonders if this quest hasn’t turned from a long shot into an absolute fool’s errand. 

But she’s not one to give up easily. She’s a scavenger and if anyone has a shot at finding a crystal surely it is her. Rey picks a landing area that seems to have the least damage and heads down. 

She lands without issue and heaves herself out of her fighter and into the snow. She immediately sinks down to her ankles. 

“You’re gonna have to stay here buddy, it’s too deep for you," She tells BB-8, “mind the ship for me, okay?”

BB-8 beeps sadly, wanting to accompany her and warns her to be careful. Rey smiles at him and nods.

Her snow gear is a big improvement over running around Starkiller in her dessert grab. Then only adrenaline had kept her going. It’s a still freezing here though. 

She pulls a scarf up to protect her face but the chill of the wind gets through none the less. As she checks that she has her torch and swings her pack over her shoulder she enquires about the temperature with BB-8. Kriff! Minus 32 standard.

Rey gives BB-8 one last wave and heads off. The texts she’d taken from Ach-To talked about the quest for a kyber crystal that younglings each undertook as part of their training, and emphasised that a young Jedi would be drawn to their crystal if they calmed their mind and faced their demons. 

With no better idea of how to go about this Rey walks until she can no longer see BB-8 and the ship and then plants herself in the snow to try and reach out with her mind as Luke had guided her to on Ach-To. Let’s hope I find more than a leaf on my own this time, she thinks. 

Scavenging, even after many years, took concentration. A slip up meant rusty cuts and dark bruises at best and deadly falls at worst. Any moment of distraction might be the difference between finding a sellable part and eating, or missing it, and going hungry.

Meditation is very different though. Concentration on Jakku meant total alertness to one’s surroundings, not withdrawing inwards and quieting the mind.

Rey slows her breathing and tries to open herself to the force in the way she a first managed on Starkiller as Ben stared piercingly at her, purple light from their locked blades illuminating his still unscarred face.

She stays as long as she can bear, but it is so cold sitting in the snow. Eventually, she rises again, legs cramping a little from the cold. She has no real sense of which direction to try and the wind is picking up. 

I’ll just head out and if I have no luck I can put up my tent and try again tomorrow, Rey decides. 

She tramps steadily through the snow, the icy wind squeezing tears from her eyes and causing her breath to huff out in frosted puffs. As the snow billows around her more and more Rey stops to try and unclip the torch from her belt. It’s only late afternoon but the stormy weather is making it dark already. 

Rey fumbles for a few minutes, her fingers too thick and clumsy within her gloves before resolving to slip her gloves off for a minute so she can get the torch. She uses her teeth to tug them off and instantly the cold bites at her flesh. 

It doesn’t take long to get the torch unclipped and lit. Tucking it under her arm, Rey notices her fingers are already a little numb and hastily shoves her gloves back on. 

She keeps tramping forward. The terrain begins to rise and soon she is struggling uphill. It’s hard climbing. She is surprised. She’s used to the long hot trek up Jakku dunes but this feels different, she sinks into the snow with each step and the cold constricts her chest on every heaving breath. 

She warming up at least, after several minutes of climbing she is sweating in her thick clothes. She keeps going for another hour maybe, over hills and valleys of snow. 

It is beautiful, she thinks, as the moon rises and shines off the white landscape. All the time she reaches out with the Force, hoping to feel a pull in one direction. 

However, darkness is falling now and Rey concedes it’s time to stop and set up for the night. She has a snow tent and sleeping bag and some rations in her pack. 

She stops in a dip between two hills where she is a little sheltered from the wind, which by now is positively howling, and plops her pack down. 

Quickly she realises that the tent is hard to put up in the low light. Her torch isn’t offering much help now that the snow is swirling everywhere with the wind. Hunched over in the cold she can’t seem to get the poles to go in right. Frigid air whips against her tired body and sweat-soaked clothes. 

Rey is trembling violently by the time the tent collapses sideways for the third time, buffered by the fierce winds. She starts to panic a little, she is far colder now than she had felt on Starkiller. Her once sweaty clothes are freezing now and her teeth won’t stop chattering. 

She tugs roughly at the tent in frustration and to her horror one of the poles pierces the fabric, tearing a gash in the tent's roof and causing it to collapse once more. 

She is really stressing now. Without the tent she know’s she doesn’t stand a chance. BB-8 and the ship suddenly seem terrifyingly far away. Rey is furious at herself. She was always so self-sufficient and capable on Jakku but she sees now how naive it was to think she could just head out on her own and be okay. 

She knows she needs help but her only radio is in the fighter and it’s so far away. She feels so exhausted already. Suddenly she longs for Starkiller. Better a fight for her life than to slowly freeze.

Ben! It occurs to her in a flash. She has never needed a radio to reach him. She might not be having any luck getting the Force to lead her to a kyber crystal but letting it lead her to Ben is as easy as breathing. It is no harder to reach out her mind to touch his than it would be to raise her hand if he was standing within arms reach.

She closes her eyes, breathes and lets the bond ripple open. When she opens her eye’s Ben is standing in front of her. The snow swirls around him but his clock hangs heavy and unmoved evincing that he is really warm and safe on some First Order ship, no matter how solidly he appears before her. 

Things have been so difficult between them since the night of Leia’s passing but he doesn’t try and turn away now. Instead, he takes several steps towards her. 

“Where are you? You’re white as a sheet. I can feel the cold through you,” he says urgently. 

“I’m on Ilum…m. I don’t know exactly w..w..here. My tent in ruined. I’m s..sooo cold,” Rey stutters, her teeth chattering manically. “Please Ben. I need help…p..p”. 

“What the kriff are you doing on Ilum by yourself?” he asks, but it’s sort of offhand. She can see he is moving around. It looks like he is walking pointless through the snow from her perspective but she knows that’s not really the case. 

He turns to the side and reaches out his arm, it must be to a terminal she can’t see because the next moment he is barking an order to ready his ship immediately. 

He turns back to her. His eyes are as piercing as they had been on Starkiller, as they had been on the hut on Ach-To, as they had been in the throne room. There is some intense feeling stirring in their depths but Rey can’t quite put her finger on what it is. 

“Wrap yourself in your tent as best you can. Keep the lamp on,” Ben insists. He takes a step towards her and as it seems as if he is about to reach out to her but at the last moment he shifts back again. 

He is still giving her that look though. She shivers again, though not from the cold. 

“I’m coming, just hold on!” There is such fervour in his deep voice as his image fades, that despite how utterly freezing she is Rey suddenly feels okay. 

Ben is coming.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the first that changes point of view within the chapter. I've tried to mark each POV change with a line so I hope it is not too confusing.

Kylo leaves _The Conqueror_ , which he has been calling home since the catastrophic damage inflicted on _The Supremacy_ by the Rebels, in a state of barely restrained panic. 

He guns his command shuttle out of the hangar bay and jumps to hyperspace immediately. He doesn’t bother to search the First Order’s databases for coordinates, he doesn't need any help to know where to go. Kylo simply lets the Force guide him. His and Rey’s connection is open and he need only follow its thread. 

As he descends towards Ilum’s surface, his shuttle's sensors beep in warning that there is a storm raging over Rey’s position. He doesn’t need really them either though, the seething of the storm is obvious.

Kylo knows that to attempt a landing in such merciless winds, with such abysmal visibility and no co-pilot is a risk. Odds are he’ll damage his ship trying to put it down in this weather. “ _Never tell me the odds_ ,” his father's voice echoes from his childhood. 

Even with the risk of damage, Kylo doesn’t have a choice. It’s land or Rey dies and he can’t abide that. 

He is trying hard to hold his concentration on the practical steps of getting to her so he doesn’t need to examine too closely why her death is so unacceptable to him. Her predicament is forcing him to acknowledge that his feelings go well beyond not wanting to strike her down himself and add her to the list of ghosts that haunt him. They even go well beyond simply not wanting her to die. The prospect of her death is absolutely abhorrent. 

His viewport is completely whited out as he closes in on the planet's surface. The storm lashes against the shuttles massive wings and buffers it violently. 

Kylo is a good pilot but there is only so much he can do in this mess. The shuttle hits the ground at all angle and skids along. Several horrible bangs sound and he is sure he is damaging the wing and the left undercarriage. Even so, when the ship comes to a stop and the snow settles around it Kylo considers the landing a success. Whatever damage is done he can deal with in the morning. Now he must get Rey.

He had put down a couple of hundred metres to the side of where he can feel Rey’s Force signature glowing. Grabbing a torch to take with him, Kylo heads into the night without pause. 

He calls out to Rey, brushing her mind with his to let her know he is close. Her thoughts are strangely muffled like she is underwater and he is above. He realises she is close to losing consciousness. 

He raises the hand not holding his torch and lets the Force flow out of him. He has never had much cause to use the Force to alter his environment but he knows it can be done. Kylo slows the wind and pushes away the snow creating a bubble for him to move through easily. 

His heart pounding, Kylo tries to rouse Rey through their bond but gets only the feeblest response. He begins to run. 

His weight sinks him deep into the snow but it is no match for his need to reach Rey. Soon he is able to see little flickers of light, the beam of her torch is faint as the snow churns around it but still visible. 

He reaches her and falls to his knees. Her tent is barely visible so much snow has heaped upon it. Kylo doesn’t bother digging but calls on the Force and shifts all of the snow away in one motion. He doesn’t even bother unwrapping the fabric from around her instead rending it with his power. 

Rey is curled in the foetal position, a sleeping bag is draped half over her. The small amount of her face that Kylo can see is spectral in its pallor. She is definitely hypothermic. 

He scoops her up into his arms, cradling her as he had done the very first time they meet. Rey’s whole body is stiff this time though, rather than lax. 

She mumbles against his shoulder, although it is hard to hear against the wind Kylo think’s she might be saying “Ben”. 

In return, he prattles into her hair as he hurries them back to the shuttle. “You’re going to be okay Rey.” Kriff, she isn’t even shivering anymore. 

“I’ll get you warmed up,” he reaches into her mind again and feels the stupor the cold has induced. 

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.” Oh Force, please let her be okay.

He continues to use the Force to ease they’re way as he heads back to his ship. Once onboard he seals the gangway behind them blocking out the raging storm.

There are small passenger quarters with bunks but Kylo takes Rey to his room. The bed is bigger, he reasons, that’s all.

He deposits her as gently as possible upon the bed. She opens her eyes finally and blinks tiredly up at him, her lips curving just slightly in the hint of a smile.

 

———

 

“Rey, I need to take your clothes off okay? I can’t warm you through layers of icy clothing. Is that okay? You need to tell me it’s okay”.

It is an immense effort, and it comes out slow and slurred but Rey manages a whispered “okay”. 

Ben takes off his gloves and she blearily notices that his hands are shaking though they don’t feel cold when they brush her throat as he unzips her vest and then her jacket and peels them off. Rey can hear the ice-coated fabric crunching as Ben struggles to get it off her.

Next, he bends down, hunching his huge height, and tugs off her shoes and socks. He takes each of her feet between his two hands in turn. 

“I can’t feel any frostbite,” he informs her. “I’ve never been the best at Force healing but I think you’re okay”.

He turns to her pants next, having to lay her back since she can’t keep her balance alone. She is left in only her underwear and a thin singlet but she finds she doesn’t feel nervous. Mind foggy, Rey wonders idly if she is just too cold for nerves or if she has actually come to trust Ben, as strange as that might be. 

Ben lifts her to sit between his legs with her back to him. “I’m going to take your shift off now, but I won’t look. Tell me this is still okay?”

Rey nods. It’s the best she can muster right now. Her whole body feels numb. Her hazy mind can’t help but find this all so bizarre, like a strange dream. Could Kylo Ren, Jedi killer, violent Supreme Leader of the First Order, really be nervously assuring her he won’t peek at her boobs? 

Ben gently pulls her shirt upwards and then gently turns her to lay on her side, her arm across her chest, still angled away from him. He immediately covers her with a thick blanket.

“Hang in there for just a minute more Rey. I’m going to get the heating turned up. 

Rey finds she is only mildly interested in this and lets her eyes close. The pillow smells nice, like Ben and it is oh so soft. 

She can hear Ben moving around the room again but what he is doing doesn’t register. The heaviness of her body is overwhelming. 

Just as Rey feels herself drifting off, a shock of cool air hits her and she blinks awake. Ben had pulled back the covers so he could slide in behind her.

He presses along her back, fitting his body against hers until they are touching all the way from their toes to where his nose brushing her neck. 

It takes Rey’s groggy mind several moments to register that they are skin on skin. “Your c…c…clothes?” Rey blurts, surprised.

“The heating system won’t be enough to warm you now. It’s not hot enough and will take too long. Body heat is all we've got. I’m sorry”.

He wraps his arm around her and covers her hands, which are clasped against her sternum, with one of his. She can feel him stretching out with the Force to check if the frost has caused them any lasting damage. She also feels him move shuffle his legs around so her feet are wedged between them. 

“You need to stay awake, please. Talk to me. Tell me anything. What about how you felt when you found my Uncle, was that the first time you’d seen the ocean? How did you feel?”

She stays silent. It’s hard to martial any thoughts. Thinking is like running in sinking sand, effortful in an unnatural way. 

Ben prompts her again, “Come on, Rey, the ocean. This is really important”.

He speech is slow and broken but Rey forces words out, “I felt… s..s..s..stunned…I didn’t have…w…w…ords…enough for it”. 

It takes great effort to speak. Stars! She just wants to sleep. She knows her words are coming out slurred and barely audible but it’s the best she can manage.

“It was so..beu…beautiful. B..b..ut…scary….also scary. And I.. felt… stu..stupid and small…. There is…so m..much… I’ve nev…never known”.

“You’ll get to see it all, one day. I promise.”

Ben’s voice is low and sweet in her ear and his breath tickles across her cheek. He is so big around her, dwarfing her completely. And it feels good… feels safe.

She wouldn’t have said it normally but the cold has made everything dreamlike and uninhibited.

“Why… do you… feel like this? You.. f..f..feel so… good. This feels… s..so right….. I don’t…don’t… believe… he… Snoke made this. He c..c..couldn’t make…s…something this… good… and you told…m..me as soon as.. w…we met not… not to be afraid…”

 

———

 

Kylo is silent for a long moment before he answers. He can’t quite believe Rey is saying these things. That is exactly how he had felt as she let him cry his heart out for his mother. Even through the grief, it had felt right. _She_ had felt right. 

Of course, he’d been horrified with his break down the next morning. Had hated being so exposed before her once again.

And he had been confused. Kylo was unsure why she would comfort him like that when she had turned him down, tried to take the lightsaber, closed the _Falcon’s_ door in his face. Hadn’t Rey been clear that she didn’t want to be connected to him? He had spent this whole week completely preoccupied with trying not to think. Not to think about his mother, and not to think about Rey, what had transpired between them and why.

Hearing this from her now, when she is the one exposed and vulnerable, so hazy and uninhibited, awakens something inside him that Kylo had been trying so hard to put to rest. Her pull is like gravity, a natural and unassuming yet irresistible power. 

He contemplates what to say. Perhaps he should demur? To open himself in front of her again is frightening. Somehow, it is even scarier than all the torture he’d ever suffered at Snoke’s hand. But he can’t bring himself to leave her hanging, not when she is laying so trustingly in his arms.

“I don’t either. For a while, after you left, I wanted it to be true. Better it be corrupt from the start than something that could have been wonderful but that you didn’t want because it was with me. But when you came to me the night my… my mother died I couldn’t deny it anymore.” 

Kylo hesitates, he presses his face into the back of Rey’s neck to hide a little, he is on the precipice of really admitting how he cares for her and he has to work up the courage to tumble over the edge. 

“When I’m with you, all these hollow places inside me, that have been cold and empty for so long, feel healed.”

Kylo can’t help but huff out a nervous breath, the emotional effort of getting even these few sentences out taking its toll after so long fighting to hold it all in. 

Rey shifts a little in his arms, and the slide of her skin, even chilled as it is, set off sparks down his spine. She turns so she can smile softly up at him. 

Their faces are so close together. Kylo watches the way her eyes flick down to his lips then back up to meet his gaze. Force, he wants to close the distance between them. 

But he also doesn’t want it to be like this. Doesn’t want her to come back to her full senses and regret it. He couldn’t bear it if she regretted it. 

Instead, Kylo bends down and presses a lingering kiss to her forehead. Rey sighs sweetly and relaxes back down. She is shivering again which is a good sign. He thinks she is probably out of the woods now. 

Still for another hour or so he continues to pepper her with simple questions about her life on Jakku and even answers some about himself as she slowly regains the ability to talk without slurring and stuttering.

The cabin his quite warm now and Kylo decides it is safe for Rey to finally get some sleep. 

He realises this means it’s probably also time he let her alone. However, as soon as the thought, to get up and sleep elsewhere, crosses his mind Rey’s hand clamps around his forearm.

“Stay,” her voice is quiet but firm. She must have read his intention across the bond. He probes it himself and flushes at feeling just how content she is in his arms. 

Kylo smiles, while also self-consciously hoping that he is not projecting too ridiculously how desperately happy this, her desire for him to be close, makes him.

Unable to resist, he presses a line of kisses to her shoulder blade before settling down to sleep, Rey’s natural perfume all around him and her soft breathing filling his ears.


	5. Chapter 5

Rey wakes with a start as strangled breathing fills her ears. She is not used to having anyone else there at nights.

Ben lays beside her on the double bunk, twisted up in the sheets and breathing raggedly; clearly in the throes of a nightmare. 

The room is quite warm now. Her muscles feel rather stiff and sore, like she had done a lot of physical activity but she no longer feels cold and her mind is clear.

She is still nearly naked though, as is Ben, both just in underwear. Rey spots his tunic on the floor and pulls it on to cover her bare chest before reaching out to cautiously touch his bare arm. Instantly he bolts upright beside her, his opposite hand flashing up to grip her wrist. _Hard_.

He stares at her, eyes wild, one foot still in his nightmare. She doesn’t know what to say. There had never been anyone there to comfort her when she has had nightmares. She tries a soft, “it’s okay, you were just dreaming”. Her heart breaks a little when Ben’s eyes abruptly shine with tears.

She can’t help but reach for him in that moment. It doesn’t matter, that even though he has saved her life again, nothing is resolved. It doesn’t matter that they are still on opposite sides. All Rey can think about is how safe and at home she had felt in his arms as he warmed her and she wants to give that feeling to him. 

She reaches for him and shuffles forward to pull him into a hug. He hesitates for a moment, still unused to receiving comfort but then he lets out a shuddering breath and sinks against her, turning his face to press into the crook of her neck as he had done the night they lost Leia. 

Rey slides her hands against the bare skin of his back, trying to rub comforting circles. Ben sighs and presses her closer to him. His shaky breaths ghost across her collarbone. 

They stay like that for a long time, waiting for his breathing to slow. There is an easiness between them that makes no sense. Objectively their relationship is unbelievably fraught and strange but when they are together all that noise just seems to fade away.

Rey catches flashes of what the dream had been, through their bond. Ben stands, spluttering red lightsaber ignited in hand, in his usual black grab though sans helmet. At first, he seems to be standing on a thin bridge with mist swirling below, yet in that shifting, immaterial way of dreams he is also in a snow covered forest and standing under the blazing sun on white salt plains streaked red. 

In a circle around him lay the bodies of his father, his mother, his uncle, and herself. Each a horrifying compass point. Beyond them are multitudes of others, faces Rey doesn’t know. All dead, all because of him. Rey can feel his lasting horror at the dream. His guilt, and fear, and sorrow. 

She feels a wave of renewed sadness for this lost, broken man, clinging to her so desperately. She can’t help but recall the long months of nightmares she had endured alone after those men attacked her in the _Ravager_. 

Rey can’t help but wonder how different it would have been to have Ben there to hold her and help her through it? How different would it have been for him if she had been there to comfort him as Snoke pushed twisted dreams into his head? 

She realises suddenly how desperately she does not want to go back to being alone, and equally how much she doesn’t want Ben to have to either. They have to sort things out between them, and between the First Order and the Rebellion. There has to be a way, and Rey is resolved to find it. 

 

———

 

After a while, once his heart has stopped pounding, Kylo pulls away to look at Rey. A little jolt goes through him as he realises she is wearing his shirt. 

“Thank you," he tells her softly. Rey nods gently. 

“Do you want some food?” Kylo asks. 

Rey debates. It’s late morning according to the chrono on the wall and she is hungry, but the bed is soft and warm and her muscles are still achy. She not sure if she gives this line of thought away across the bond or if Ben can just read her reluctance to move on her face because he gives a little chuckle (and oh doesn’t laughter sound good on him) and tells her to stay where she is and he’ll bring some food in to her. 

As Ben moves around the ship he continues to talk to her. “There’s no real kitchen on board and I wasn’t exactly going to take time to stock gourmet while you were freezing to death but I’ve got a few things.”

“We’re going to need to stay a little while longer, the storm is still persisting so I won’t be able to check the ship until it eases off.”

He comes back into the room as he continues, “I came in pretty hard so I think there is some damage. Hopefully, we can get it fixed up easily enough and then I’ll take you to your ship.”

They eat mostly in silence and Rey dwells on how much she doesn’t want to storm to settle. She feels guilty knowing that BB-8 must be so worried but she can't deny how reluctant she is to leave the little bubble of togetherness her and Ben seem to have found. 

 

———

 

Once they have finished eating Rey asks him about the dream. 

“Do you get dreams like that a lot?” she queries, voice so gentle. She lets her arm drift to slip their fingers together.

“Pretty often,” Kylo admits. 

“I used to get nightmares all the time but it did eventually get better," Rey tells him.

“I know you did,” Kylo confessors. “I’ve seen them in my dreams. I’ve seen a lot of your life in my dreams. The nights I dream of you are really the only break from nightmares.”

“Did.. did you see what caused the nightmares?” Rey asks, illogically ashamed.

“Yes, I’m so sorry that happened to you,” he squeezes her hand gently, “I hate how hard a life you have had. So many nights I woke just desperately wishing I could march into the past and change things for you,” Kylo admits. 

“I felt that way about you actually. We both just needed someone, didn’t we? Someone to be on our side,” Rey replies.

Rey is looking up at him with her beautiful big eyes, her legs tucked under her and his tunic positively swimming on her and suddenly it is so clear to him. All he really wants is right in front of him. He can accept everything that has happened in the past, everything he has lost, and suffered and done if he can just have her now. 

“Isn’t it strange that this is only the third time we’ve met in person?” Kylo ponders. “I’ve dreamt of you too, so often, and felt your feelings through the bond. I feel like I know you better than anyone else in the galaxy and that probably no-one knows me better than you.”

“I feel the same,” Rey agrees and Kylo leans his head forward and rests his forehead against her’s. It is bizarre how normal it feels when not long ago she had been carving his face up, not nuzzling against it. 

“It’s remarkable how easy it is when we are together, don’t you think?” Rey breathes against his cheek. “There is so much reason for this not to work, for us to hate each other. It makes no sense, I couldn’t explain this feeling to anyone, but I know this is the right thing, Ben. We're supposed to work it out. Find some balance so…” Rey hesitates but Ben hears the end of her sentence in her mind “… _so we can be together_ ”. She brings her hand up to stroke, with such tenderness, the scar she left upon him. 

There are no words for how he feels in that moment. His chest seems to have cracked open, though not in a painful way. More like he is finally able to open a door that is has been taking all his strength to keep shut. It is utter relief and pure joy that floods him. It feels so good to have let himself fall off a cliff and been caught. 

Rather than trying to speak Kylo’s tilts his head to press his lips against hers. The kiss is gentle and yet absolutely searing. The bond shudders with pleasure and it tingles through their entwined forms. This is how sunlight must taste Kylo thinks madly. This is everything. _She is everything_.

He runs his hands along her back to press her closer, while Rey cards her fingers hungrily through his hair.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey couldn’t say how long Ben kisses her for. Several days could have passed and she’d still be hungry for more. He has tipped her back and settled between her legs. Meanwhile, his right hand has crept up under the tunic she stole and is teasing up her side, sweeping tantalising close to her breast. 

She has never done anything like this before. Never even kissed anyone. On lonely nights in her AT-AT she had learnt how to pleasure herself but this is entirely something else. Every time Ben rocks his hips against hers Rey’s mind whites out a little. She feels nearly as hazy as she had last night, though it certainly isn’t from the cold. Everywhere Ben touches he sets on fire. The bond is positively singing with pleasure. 

It doesn’t seem to matter to Ben that she is unpracticed. There is both an eagerness and a sweetness is the way he kisses her, in his fumbling touches, that make him seem younger than he is. She can just feel, his emotions washing into her once more, how new this all is for him too. Rey is not surprised that this quiets her nerves a little, but she is surprised by the flare of possessiveness she experiences. 

She is surprised by how much she likes that no one else knows what he tastes like, or how it feels to have his tongue slide against theirs. No one else has heard the little groans she is drawing from him, nor felt the shift of his big hands across their skin. 

Rey rolls her hips against Ben’s, suddenly feeling even more heated than before and he growls in response, sucking her tongue into his mouth and sweeping his hand tentatively across her left breast.

She arches into his touch in encouragement. Ben begins to trail scorching kisses down her neck as he thrums her nipple and all Rey can think is _more_ and _yes_ and _you_. 

____

____

__

__

____

____

__Ben leans back a little still playing with her nipple with one hand and surveys her. His hair is an absolute mess thanks to her relentless fingers and Rey doesn’t feel bad about it in the slightest._ _

__Ben runs his hand from her breast down to the hem of his shirt, he doesn’t speak but it’s clear to her that he is asking permission to pull it up._ _

__Rey nods. She is eager to feel more of him. Though she is a little nervous. It’s strange, given she spent the night before bare in his arms, but being laid out before him is setting off butterflies in her stomach._ _

__The feeling doesn’t last long though. With the bond so open, thrumming happily at their togetherness, she feels Ben’s total awe and overwhelming lust as he exposes her. He finds her breathtaking._ _

__Rey reaches up to pull him back down intending to kiss him senseless. To show him she desires him just as greatly._ _

__They take their time with each other. Rey can hear the storm still blustering outside, they have the perfect excuse not to rush._ _

__Ben rains kisses everywhere. Rey learns that the spot just below her ear, the inside of her wrist and the dip of her hip bone are all particularly sensitive._ _

__In her turn, she flips them over and explores Ben’s body with the meticulousness of a scavenger. She is supposed to be gratifying him but the ripple of his muscle under her touch and the way his hands flex compulsively on her thighs are driving her crazy as well._ _

__The sound he makes when she brings her hand to the bulge in his briefs runs through her like electricity and Ben equally reacts likes he's touched a live wire, jerking against her fingers._ _

__Feeling daring, feeling hungry, Rey slips her hand under his waistband, Ben rolls his hips to meet her and she has to bit her lip at how it thrills her._ _

__She only gets away with a few minutes of stroking him before Ben is groaning non-stop. And oh the way he says her name, deep voice having gone all gravely._ _

__He surges up to kiss her as he comes in her hand and Rey feels the way pleasure floods him across the bond._ _

__They stay like that only for a few moments, though his kisses are hot and deep. Ben flips them around again and lavishes kisses across her neck and breasts. He sucks on one nipple and then the other until she is absolutely drenched and uncontrollably undulating her hips trying to get some friction._ _

__Ben slides lower, laving across her belly. He pauses to kiss the spurs of her hips again, given she had been obvious in her liking for it earlier. He stills himself and looks up at her._ _

__“Can I take these off sweetheart? I want to touch you. I want to taste you.” His voice alone, somehow low and breathless at the same, nearly sends her over the edge but it’s not that that effects her the most._ _

__It’s the look in Ben’s eyes that really hits her hard. That unnamable emotion she had seen brewing in the intense way he looks at her, now Rey knows what it is. You’re falling in love with me, she realises. It wells up in her in that moment how much she feels the same._ _

__She has to use the bond to nudge him on, her throat suddenly too tight for words, but he understands. Ben presses a last lingering kiss to her hip before drawing her underwear down. He teases her, running his lips and fingers across her inner thighs and she has to tug desperately at his hair before he finally dips down and sweeps his tongue across her folds. He swirls a finger around her opening several times before pressing slowly inside her._ _

__Ben reaches out to her with his mind, asking her how she likes it, how to make her fall apart. Rey opens her memories, limited though they are, of her own experiments._ _

__He takes everything she has ever down to herself and makes it a million times better. She’s almost embarrassed by how quickly he has her soaking and writhing and then clenching around his fingers and crying out his name as she comes._ _

__

__———_ _

__

__Afterwards, as they lay wrapped around each other, he tells her that is it strange hearing her call him Ben._ _

__“Had someone asked me before I meet you I would have been sure I’d hate being called by that name, and yet I don’t. It is a strange bit though. For so long in my mind Ben Solo had died at the Jedi academy; cast aside by his parents to be murdered by his uncle and then mutilated by Snoke. But when I’m with you… you are bringing back to life so much that I thought was lost forever. You make me want to be Ben again, even though I know that cannot ever be,” he tells her gently._ _

__“Why do you think it can’t be? I don't think so,” Rey tells him, propping herself up so she can see his face properly._ _

__“The darkness has consumed me for so long. I have done so many unforgivable things, coming back from one, let alone all of them, is an impossibility.” There is such matter-of-fact resignation in Ben’s tone that Rey doesn’t even need the bond to tell that he believes this completely._ _

__“There is no place for me as Ben. No one in the galaxy would ever accept me turning back. I have long known that there could never be any forgiveness for me. It is very selfish of me to get involved with you, I can’t seem to resist though,” he gives her a wane smile._ _

__“I don’t want to always be an anchor for you though. A dark shadow at the back of your mind. I know what it is to live in that shadow and I will die before I do that to you. I don't deserve anyone’s forgiveness, even if it were on offer, and I shouldn’t be risking you my darkness. I should do the right thing for once and let you go”. He says it with the air of someone thinking out loud, realisation slowly dawning._ _

__Rey doesn’t know what has turned his mood so melancholy. Maybe he had felt the same piercing realisation that they were fast passing beyond just caring about each other._ _

__She recalls when Luke had told her that everything she had just said was wrong in her first fumbling attempts to understand the Force. Because oh that is how she feels about everything Ben just said._ _

__

__———_ _

__

__Rey is suddenly wrapping her palm around his cheek and hold his face so he cannot break her gaze. When she speaks her voice is blazing with emotion._ _

__“You’re wrong, you’re so wrong. I’ve been in your head, in your memories, in your dreams, I feel all of it. There is so much more light than there is dark. How else could you have resisted Snoke for so long? How old were you when he first spoke to you? Three, four? Twenty years you held on. That is more than anyone could. That is incredible Ben. And he still couldn't extinguish your light. After everything, he did to you. Everything you did. All that suffering, and guilt, and loneliness. After sinking so deep into the dark you're still here. You’re light, it blazes like the sun. I feel its warmth always. You have filled a void in my heart. You make me feel whole in a way I didn’t know was possible. You don’t need to fear the dark anymore. You don’t need to fear yourself anymore. I forgive you and I will help you find forgiveness with others. I promise you!” Rey finishes with a sob… “Please Ben”._ _

He feels her mercy wash over him like a wave. Her understanding. Her _love_. He lets it wash out all the self-loathing, grief-stricken, guilty and fearful corners of his soul. He sighs against her cheek, feeling okay in a way he can’t ever remember before. 

__He pulls back a little to look at her. Just stare at this amazing woman who had hurtled so unexpectedly into his life and changed everything. Rey strokes the side of his face, running her finger along the end of his scar. He presses his forehead against hers. “Thank you” he whispers and it ghosts across Rey’s lips. She parts her lips at the feeling and Ben presses forward to kiss her._ _

__“Where do we go from here?” he asks gently._ _

__“I don’t know but we will work it out together, I promise. You’re not alone”._ _

__He smiles at her repating that phrase and she returns it and his chest aches with how good it feels to see such genuine happiness on her face._ _

__“Neither are you. Never again. You’re right, we can work it out together”._ _

__

__———_ _

__

__The snowstorm has eased by that afternoon and they go out together to assess the damage done to his ship. It’s not as bad as he had anticipated and working together they fix it easily._ _

__They are both quiet as he flies her back towards her fighter. The air is heavy with their reluctance to part but Rey keeps her hand resting on his leg and the bond hums with their resolution to be partners going forward._ _

__Rey will be leaving without having found a crystal but he promises they can come back together soon. After all, he’ll need a new one too. Now that he has allowed himself to open up to the light the red lightsaber feels wrong, like it doesn’t really belong to him._ _

__Once they land near her fighter, he walks her out. They don’t need to say anything. Everything they need to share is woven in the Force around them. Hope, love and resolve to find a future together._ _

__It is as Ben Solo that he kisses Rey goodbye in the snow._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone's interested the prompts I got from dietplainlite for the exchange were:
> 
> Prompt 1: Reunion.  
> Prompt 2: Snowed in.  
> Prompt 3: We've been on this sub-light speed trip or a month and still haven't worked out our issues.
> 
> Plus tags: Angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort and first time. 
> 
>  
> 
> dietplainlite,
> 
> I hope you think I did an okay job of filling the prompts snowed in and reunion. Even though they don't get stuck on a long sub-light trip I tried to incorporate the idea of slowly working through their issues. I know this probably doesn't technically fill first time. I was going to have them go all the way but it felt a bit rushed. I like to think they sleep together for the first time in celebration when they end the war together.
> 
>  
> 
> P.S Everyone please do tell me in the comments if you see spelling or grammar mistakes, I need all the help I can get in that department.


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